SEO for Electricians
How To Avoid Costly Mistakes...
So if you're an electrical contractor, this video is for you. We're going to talk about how to get to the top of Google and how we're going to do it fast and efficiently. Let's get started right now.
All right. So in this video, you're going to discover the fastest way to get consistent and reliable results. As far as getting to the top of Google whenever somebody types in electrical contractor in your city or something like that, some kind of variation of that. All right? This means more calls, more jobs. It means more financial freedom for your business. It means more security when the downtime's hit and it also is a great way to put those bottom feeding, low balling, cut rate competitors in their place. You put them down below where they belong. Okay?
SEO for Electricians - Where to Begin?
So the point of this is either you're going to do it yourself and you're going to do it right the first time, or you're going to fix a big mess that you made in the past. Or you're going to have enough knowledge to go out there and hire the right person to do this stuff for you. Okay? Like I said, if you do it wrong it can cost you thousands and thousands of dollars. It can set you back one, two, even three years if you do this stuff wrong. We want to get this stuff right and get you where you belong. All right. Okay. So before we jump in, I want to tell you an incredibly powerful story. So back in 2009, I moved back from Kansas city to my hometown in Missoula Montana. I had a 10 month old daughter, I had a new wife and I had started a new business and things were not going well. I started a service business here in Missoula.
Things were not going well, my back was up against the wall. To make things worse I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, my health insurance was about to end. I mean, it was a tough time. Okay? It was a really tough time. The big question that kept coming up in my head was, will I fail? Okay? So if my business fails, that means that I fail as a father, I fail as a husband, I fail as a man. That's how I was looking at it. Luckily, an old family friend Rick Kern. You can see the picture here. He came along and kind of set me straight. What he was doing was, he was ranking websites up on Google. I didn't really know much about SEO or search engine optimization at the time. This guy taught me how to do it and I ran with it, I've made it work for my business. So SEO, was my solution. Getting to the top of Google, putting my service business up at the top of Google, made the phone ring, made the money come in and I'm a hard working guy so the money was coming in.
So basically, the point of me telling you this story is that I'm not really different from any other business owner. I just came across something that worked and then I spent hours and hours every day, testing, learning, and figuring this stuff out. All right? So I consider myself like an explorer, like I'm going out and I'm finding all these golden nuggets. Now, what I want to do is I want to share those golden nuggets with you. All right. So in a moment, I'm going to break down exactly what Google wants, what Google really wants. Okay? We're going to do this by focusing on foundations first. All right?
Electrician SEO Services, It's like a House
So think about your Electrician SEO or your internet marketing as a house. Okay. If you don't have your foundation set correctly, then your house is going to crumble. So it doesn't matter how nice your house looks on the outside. It doesn't matter if you have a remodeled kitchen, brand new windows, new roof, all that stuff, it doesn't matter. If the foundation's cracked or the foundation's failing none of that stuff is going to matter.
It's the same thing with SEO for electricians, all the BS that you hear out on the internet or from gurus experts out there. If the foundations aren't correct, then none of this stuff, the tricks and tips, they tell you is going to work. All right? Now, I went and saw Tony Robbins not too long ago and he said something that really hit me and it was, "Complexity is the enemy of execution." So the reason I'm going to break this down and keep it simple, is so that you can execute. So you can understand and execute. The simpler I make this, the higher chances are that you're actually going to take this stuff, run with it and use it for your business. Okay? So let's talk about those five simple things that we're going to learn when it comes to SEO. Here, we're going to discover about mobile first websites. We're going to talk about maps or the organic listings, the difference and what you want to go for. We're going to talk about keywords. Okay? We're going to talk about search terms. Keyword search terms are the same thing.
We are going to talk about citations or online directories, very important stuff and finally, we're going to talk about backlinks. Now, some of this stuff might sound like internet jargon or marketing jargon or high techie type stuff. Don't worry, like I said, I'm going to simplify, I'm going to break this down so that anybody can understand this. All right. So let's talk about simple thing number one, we're talking about mobile first website. Not sure if you knew this or not, but these little smart phones are pretty popular these days and Google knows that. So, we need to make sure that we pass the Google test. Just because your web designer or whoever built your website says that your website is mobile ready, does not mean it actually is. I don't know how many times somebody's called me up and said, "Oh, I'm taken care of mobile ready, Joe. I don't need to worry about that." I run their websites through this test and it fails. Okay? All you need to do. This is free, it takes one minute.
Websites and Electrician SEO
Just go to Google and search for Google mobile test, run your website through this little test that search engines and Google provides and it'll tell you whether you're mobile friendly or not. That's foundational. You got to get that taken care of. If you don't have that taken care of all the other stuff, won't matter. All right. Now, let's talk about the difference between maps and organic listings. So whenever you do a search for an electrical contractor in your city. Google, is going to throw up a little map section here and they're going to throw the organic section here. Now I'm going to tell you right now, the map section up here gets 90% of the clicks. 90% of the business, 90% of the money is made right here. So that's what we're going to focus on. Yeah, if you can rank down here, you can get some jobs and get some money. But, what I want to do is make sure you get that 90%, that really matters to your business. Okay? That's what we're going to be talking about today.
Ranking on Google with SEO Services
So know the difference between those two. Then, you may be thinking about what about Google AdWords is it clicks above. I have a whole nother video for you guys. It's called how to do ad words for electricians. If you want to watch that, we'll do that next, but let's focus on SEO services first. Okay. Simple thing number three, we're talking about keywords. Okay. Do not over-complicate keywords. All they are, are search terms that people put into Google to find you. So for example, electricians in Missoula Montana. Somebody types that into Google and clicks search, that's a keyword. Another example of a keyword would be, electrical contractor in Atlanta. Okay. Another one would be, electrician Kansas City. Those are examples of keywords and we want to find the best ones for your business. So now I'm going to show you exactly how to find them. Okay? Then, I'm going to show you where to put them on your website. So once we find them, we need to do something with them. All right, so let's go here.
First thing you need to do. You can just go to Google, just go to Google.com and start typing in words I have to do with your business. So you notice when you start typing something into Google, Google starts suggesting all of these different searches down here. Okay? So the reason Google throws those suggestions up is because, those are things that actual human beings have typed into Google over and over and over and the more popular ones are going to show up at the top. That's how you're going to start determining what other people are searching for and what you should be going for as far as moneymaking keywords.
Money Making Keywords for Local SEO Services
All right, money-making search terms. Then you want to go into your Google AdWords account. If you don't have an AdWords account, open it up, it's free and there's a tool in there called the Google Keyword Planner. You start putting these keyword ideas up into this box and click search and Google will start breaking it down, give you some detailed information. Like the average monthly searches and how high the competition is, if it's high, medium, or low. Okay? So, that's how you're going to determine what... The main keyword you want to go for are the ones that get the most average monthly searches in your city. All right. If you want to take it a step further, this is optional. You can go to SEMRush.com and open up a free account and they'll give you 10 searches a day and they'll give you all kinds of information. They'll tell you what your competitors are going for. They give you more information than you can possibly handle with all kinds of cool graphs and this and that.
But that's optional. I just want to throw that in, in case you want to do that. Now, where do we put these keywords? Once we determine the good keywords to go for, that we're going to make the most money off of for our business. Where do we put it? Where do we put those keywords? Well, we're going to put them in what are called title tags and content. Now, let's look and see an example of a title tag. In any webpage on the internet, if you hover your little mouse over one of those little tabs at the top. You're going see a little box pop up and in there is going to be your title tag. Okay? You want to make sure your keywords are in your title tags. Okay? I like to put the keyword and then my business name and phone number. All right. That's the best thing to do. That's what we do for all our clients when we set up SEO services for them, first thing we do. Because that's the first thing Google looks at to determine what the hell you want to rank for.
Importance of An Optimized Homepage When Doing Local SEO for Electricians
It's super important and I see people get this wrong all the time. Sometimes they'll just have the word homepage in there. Okay? No. You want to put your keywords and your business name in there. All right? In the title tags. Now you're asking, well, how do I go edit my title tags? Well if you have a web designer, they need to do it for you. You need to give them the keywords and say, put these into my title tags. All right. Now, if you're doing your own website and you're using like wix.com or Squarespace or one of these other like do it yourself, websites. Every single one of them has a place to put title tags. If you can't find it, contact their support, send the support ticket, call them up, whatever you got to do. Figure out where to put the keywords into the title tags. WordPress has its own little way as well. Okay. Second place you want to put keywords is just in the content. As you write your words on your website, or as you hire somebody to do that for you.
Have them sprinkle in different keywords and they can be variations of the keywords. They don't have to be exact and you don't have to have a certain amount. Maybe just throw it in one, two, three, four times, if it makes sense. But number one thing to understand is, keep it natural. Make sure it sounds natural to a human. Don't stuff it in there like people used to do and try to cram in a bunch of keywords and make it sound real weird and awkward and spammy. Don't do any of that, Google doesn't want any of that stuff anymore, okay? Keep it real, keep it natural. All right. Now, very important tip. This is where a lot of people go wrong, including those marketing experts out there. What you want to do is for each service that you offer, okay? Or each keyword that you want to rank for. Let's say you do all your keyword research and you have 10 keywords that you want to rank for. All right. Do not stuff those all onto home page. Okay?
Title Tags for Electricians
Create a separate page for each and every service and each page has its own unique title tag, put the unique keywords into each title tag. Okay? Do not stuff. Do not cram a bunch of stuff into one page. Do not create a page and just list all your services, no. A separate page for each service very important. Google likes it, humans that visit your website like it. That alone could make a huge difference in your business. All right. So moving on, let's talk about simple thing number four, citations or online directories. Those are the same. When you say citations or online directories, it's the same thing. Okay? Now there's the top three citations that you have to get right off. Okay? Number one, the Google My Business page. Okay? You may or may not have that already. Number two, your Facebook business page. Google looks at that to compare, to make sure you have correct information and your Yelp business page. Okay? Then there's 50 more than I'm going to get into in a minute.
But you got to get those top three first and you got to get them correct. But let's talk about what getting correct means. So when you're in your Google My Business account, here's what it's going to look like. Okay? You want to make sure you get the correct business name. I see people put weird variations of their business name or they try to stuff keywords into their business name. Your official business name that you have on your business license with the city, put that right there. Make sure the spelling is correct, all of that stuff. Next thing I see people mess up on all the time is, they put the wrong categories. Okay? If you're an electrical contractor, put electrical contractor in there as the very first category and then if you have secondary services list those. I see people will get that wrong all the time and I'm not sure why, it's weird. Even these marketing pros or SEO pros will put the wrong categories in there. Google looks at that to match your keywords on your website.
Local Business Directory Citations for SEO
Make sure that your address is located inside your city that you want to rank in when you take these pictures and the reason you're using your cell phone is because. What happens is your cell phone will tag the pictures with your actual city location, your latitude and longitude on planet earth and Google looks at that. That's how they're determined if you're the real deal, or if you're one of these fake fly by night companies. It's huge, it works amazingly well. Okay? So, so tip, make sure you take photos, upload them to your Google My Business account. Then also you want to get them on the other top 50 online local directories. Okay? Out there. Now, how do you find these top 50 local directories? We already talked about Google, Facebook and Yelp. This is the top three, but what about the other 50? All right. The way you find these, is you simply go to Google and search for top local directories for SEO. You're going to get the ultimate list, here are the most important local business directories.
Make a list of all these things, get all your stuff in there. But not only get them in there, don't only get them submitted in there. But make sure everything is correct. You may have to go in there and correct a bunch of stuff and fix a bunch of old information or information that you set up when you didn't know what you were doing. Get rid of all the duplicate junk out there, more is not better with this stuff. Clean is better, clean consistent information that matches. Everything must match your Google my business account, all the information that we talked about. Okay? Now, moving on. Simple thing number five. Now, that we have our website taken care of and our citations and all that stuff is clean and we have a solid foundation. Now we can start doing backlinks. I see a lot of people go to backlinks first and that is a huge mistake. Backlinks are worthless if you don't have your foundations. Just like new windows are worthless on your house, if you have a cracked foundation in your house. We want backlinks to come last, I did this in order of importance.
Backlinks to help your SEO Campaign
Okay. When we talk about backlinks, if you don't know what I'm saying, I'll show you in a sec. But these are real links created by real connections with real people. None of this hire somebody from India or hire some link farm to build you links, some link building service, no. It needs to be real and it needs to be with real people. Here's an example. When I first opened my service business here in Missoula, the local newspaper called the Missoulian. I went down to their office and I said, "Can you do an article on my business because I'm new?" "Absolutely." They said. You'll be surprised at how many of these publications will do articles on your business. They put it on their website and they put a link, the blue words down here and when somebody clicks on that, it links over to my website. That's a backlink, that's a powerful backlink. It bumped me from the bottom of the page, up to the top of the page on Google within a couple of weeks of that link showing up. Other ways that I use to get links is, I sponsor local charities. Okay?
Then I ask these local charity websites to put a link back to me and say, "Hey, they donated." Okay. Another thing you can do is exchange something of value. Do some work for somebody in exchange for a link instead of money. Okay. That link will be gold and it'll be worth way more than the money that you would've gotten otherwise, by doing that. Okay? Next is that you can get testimonials from vendors. So wherever you buy stuff for your business, equipment, materials, whatever. If you love something or love this business you work with, write a powerful testimonial. Send it over to them and say, "Hey, can you put this on your website? And then a link back to my business. That would be great." Okay? It's a win-win for both people, I've had three different vendors do that from my business back in that day. Another thing you can do is network with other local businesses. So you've got other friends in your town that own businesses, we all do.
Local Business Groups to help Network
If you're joining business groups like BNI, stuff like that. Trade links from their websites to your websites. That is so powerful, so easy and it helps everybody. All right? Another thing you do is, get an article published on a local website in your town, local blogs, local news sites, whatever. Write the articles and give it to them. Helpful articles. If you're not a writer, I'm not a writer, but if you're not a writer, hire somebody to do it for you. There are tons of writers looking to do stuff for cheap. Okay? So let's review the five simple things checklists that you can do for SEO, for electrical contractors. Number one, mobile first website. Number two, maps or organic. Number three, the keywords or the search terms. Make sure those are in the title tags on your website. Fourth thing is citations or online directories. Get them all submitted and clean in the top 50 and then finally go out there and get some backlinks. Network, work with people in your town and get these backlinks. If you do these five things, you will be unstoppable in your town.
Marketing for Electricians
You'll be recession proof. You'll be competition proof. You'll beat out all the low balling competition and you'll be on top where you belong. All right. So that's it. Now, I've got four other videos in this series. One is marketing for electricians. How to do Google AdWords for electricians? How to get Google Reviews for electricians and how to do websites? We're going to talk about some powerful stuff that double triple your conversions in the website video. So check those out and let's make this happen. Now, if you're a client of Big West Marketing, all of this is taken care of for you. We like to make this as simple as possible for our clients. So you can focus on what you do best. Now, if you are not a client of Big West marketing. Right now, we are offering a free consultation up to 30 minutes. That's normally a $97 value, so take advantage of this right now. Just call or click on the link to schedule a day and time that works best for you. So if you're tired of being confused and overwhelmed, then contact us today.
Someone from our office will show you step by step, what you need to do to be successful online. If you're ready for a real solution, contact us today.